A hybrid agent-based and equation based model for the spread of infectious diseases

Abstract

Both agent-based models and equation-based models can be used to model the spread of an infectious disease. Equation-based models have been shown to capture the overall dynamics of a disease outbreak while agent-based models are able to capture heterogeneous characteristics of agents that drive the spread of an outbreak. However, agent-based models are computationally intensive. To capture the advantages of both the equation-based and agent-based models, we create a hybrid model where the disease component of the hybrid model switches between agent-based and equation-based. The switch is determined using the number of agents infected. We first test the model at the town level and then the county level investigating different switch values and geographic levels of switching. We find that a hybrid model is able to save time compared to a fully agent-based model without losing a significant amount of fidelity.